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Installing a Thru-Hull

Last weekend I drilled a hole in the bottom of the new-old boat for a 3/4" water inlet. When it came to a backing plate/block, I was unsure how to proceed. A couple of guys in the boatyard built their own boats so I asked them. One had a piece of 1/4" G10. I had a wood block in my hand and was asking him what he thought. Then he handed me the G10 and recommended I drill out a few backing discs.

I had an assortment of hole saws with me, the largest was 4". It fit the flange feet with little to spare. Here's how it went:

Made three 4" dia. plates

Drilled out (2) 1" holes for the thru hull

Drilled two plates for the flange and countersunk one

Epoxied them to the hull

And that's how I left it. We are going back Sunday to install the seacock and the triducer. I'm curious to see how well the epoxy held up. I'll take pics of the installation Sunday.

We went through the Okeechobee Waterway. I often referred to it as a slog. But occasionally it was pretty interesting. And three times it was kinda scary.

We left Stuart late because I had to change the oil and we had to fuel up. The first lock took us up 13'. Some heavy rain made visibility poor and the narrow channel with numerous markers added to the drama. We docked for the night in Indiantown, the place where old boats go to die. But the marina was actually pretty nice.

The next day came the scary part - the 49' bridge and shallow Lake Okeechobee. When we got to the bridge I slowed to a crawl. On that day the Army Core of Engineers said the bridge height was 50.13' and Navigation Route 1 was 5.25' deep. As we coasted along we were looking up at the Windex. That would be the first point to touch the bridge. I had my hand on reverse and was ready to hit the throttle if we had to stop. Once the Windex cleared, we watched the VHF antenna. That too cleared. WHEW! One down and one to go, or so I thought.

Going through the Port Mayacca lock we dropped 1'. I thought we would be going up, not down. In front of us was a Coast Guard boat. As we were leaving the lock I heard the lock tender tell the CG boat, "Hug the green markers. There's a sand bar near the red markers." I did the same. We got down to less than a foot below our keel but made it out onto the lake without incident. I thought that was it for the close calls.

But what I didn't know is the channel leaving the lake was also shallow. We watched the depth sounder numbers drop to below what they were when entering the lake. "Wouldn't that be great if we got all this way and couldn't get off the lake!" But again, no sign of hitting bottom. We planned to stop at Roland Martin's Marina in Clewiston. It's supposed to be the nicest marina on the OWW but we knew if we were to make Ft. Myers the next day we had to keep going.

We arrived in Moore Haven around 4:30PM and tied up at the city dock. Then the heavens opened up and it poured! Next day we left early. We must have seen over 100 gators in the water. Some pretty big. Other than the wind being in our face (as it was almost the entire way) it was pretty uneventful until we got close to Ft, Myers. Then the skies turned ominous. I pushed the RPMs to 2300 in hopes we'd beat the storm. This was the front that flooded Texas but we were only to get the southern edge of it. We tied up at the marina and the rain began. But it wasn't anything like we expected. That night we went out for Mexican and Margaritas.

The last day was more of the same. Wind in our face and threatening clouds. But no rain. The channel got fairly shallow in several places and once the markers confused us when private markers appeared to be ICW markers. The chartplotter helped get us through. Of course we had a few power boaters knock us around but most were courteous. But the one boat I didn't expect to blow by us was a USCG boat. It left the largest wake of all. But maybe they had an emergency. Then they returned and once again left us some big wakes.

Once in Charlotte Harbor the weather started looking worse. All this shallow water had my nerves on edge the entire way. I have been spoiled by Lake Michigan sailing where you don't even think about running aground unless you're asleep. After we passed Boca Grande Inlet and turned NE, the waves were on our port stern and it was a roller coaster ride for the next hour or so. We pulled into the channel leading to our canal a little after 7 and up to our dock around 7:20. I coasted up to the dock and then the boat stopped.

We were aground.

I gunned the engine and pushed us up into place. We tied the boat up, unloaded the necessary items and returned to the land life again.

The boat did great. The through-hull is water tight. And the two of us plopped down in the living room and just sat. At one point I turned on the TV but it was so fast-paced I had to turn it off.